Giants of the Frost (48 page)

"Shush. Follow me." He crouched and disappeared into the hole. The scent of smoke tickled my nostrils. My feet throbbed. Skripi's head popped out again. "Come on, Victoria. There isn't time to wonder." I knelt and poked my head into the hole. It led into a tunnel. Skripi was scurrying ahead of me. I followed him on all fours. There was light down there, and smoke drifted toward me. The tunnel opened out into a sort of room about four feet high and ten feet wide. I sat back on my haunches and looked around me. Skripi's home was a subterranean cave, not tall enough to stand in, but certainly large enough to hide in. The floor was covered in mats woven from pine needles and animal fur, warm and soft. The walls were stone, but hung with more mats. The room was circular and pots, pans, sticks and stones were piled up against the walls. It looked like a cross between a medieval kitchen and an animal's den. Skripi threw a log on the fire and it flared to life. Smoke began to fill the cave and I coughed.

"The smoke disappears slowly," he said, kneeling next to me and pushing me onto my back. "Put your feet near the fire, Victoria. Poor things." He clicked his tongue. "Your right foot is all scratched up. I'll fix it for you." He disappeared off down another tunnel and returned a few moments later with a pot of sweet-smelling ointment. He sat near my feet and rubbed it into my skin.

I propped myself up on my elbows. The coldness was withdrawing from my body and the ointment was numbing the pain in my feet.

"Thank you," I said, because I didn't know what else to say and manners always prevail in the strangest of circumstances.

"Thank
you
," Skripi said. "You killed my sister." The battle with the hag seemed so long ago that I wondered momentarily if I had dreamed it. "I guess I did," I said, and once more experienced the odd sensation of swinging out of my body to watch myself from afar. "I feel weird," I said, pressing my hand to my forehead.

"Lie back," Skripi said.

I did as he said and stared at the roof of the cave while he massaged my feet. Over and over, I tried to make sense of what had happened to me that evening. The hag, the storm, Odin at the door, hiding in the forest. I replayed it and replayed it in a loop, afraid that if I stopped thinking of it I would lose my connection to reality forever and be cut adrift into madness.

Skripi's hands left my feet and he came to sit near my head. "You are safe for now, Victoria. What is making you so pale and fearful?"

"I wish there was an ointment for what's happening in here," I said, tapping my forehead, unable to steady my voice. "I've seen things that I never thought I'd see."

"You're frightened."

"Well, obviously."

"It's more than Odin being here that frightens you. It's the thought of Odin being anywhere, of him existing at all."

I couldn't answer. Instead I sat up and stared at the fire. I took sidelong glances at Skripi, trying to make his odd face and features more familiar. "How certain are you that Odin won't find us here? Won't he smell the smoke?"

"Odin has no skills in tracking or in staying quiet. He has always relied upon force and the wits of others."

"Can he sense us? You know, the prickle you told me about?"

Skripi shook his head.

"Are you sure? If the hag could call up to him, surely he must be able to zero in on us somehow." Skripi crawled over to the other side of the cave and began searching in a sack made of leather. "Would you like something to eat?"

"Why are you changing the subject?"

He held up two pieces of dried meat. "Dried fish or dried rabbit?" The thought of either turned my stomach. "Skripi, why don't you answer me?" He dropped the pieces of meat by his sides and his oily eyes became round and pitiful. "Don't be angry with me, Victoria. It was only a little lie."

"Lie? What lie?"

"The hag. My sister. She couldn't…"

Confused as I was, it took me nearly thirty seconds to catch on. "She couldn't what? You mean she couldn't… she couldn't have contacted Odin to tell him about me and Vidar?" Skripi hung his head in shame.

Anger flared. "Then why the hell did you tell me that? I risked my life to suck her breath out!" Skripi put his hands up in front of him, his spindly fingers reminding me of the rune on the stone around my neck. "I had to, Victoria. I couldn't kill her, because she only appeared inside the building and I couldn't get in. And you've protected your own kind by killing her."

I sagged across my own knees. "Don't pretend you care about my 'own kind.' You did it fox yourself. You told me you can't go home until they're both dead."

Skripi crawled across the floor toward me. "It's true, but if you'd ever seen Idavíd, even once, you'd know why." He sat beside me. "You can still trust me to keep you safe, Victoria."

"But for how long? I can't hide in this hole forever. Is there any chance at all that he'll give up and go home?"

Skripi's eyes grew sad. "Odin has no mercy in his blood."

"I was afraid of that."

"But Vidar will come." Skripi's voice dropped to a gentle whisper. "This is all about Vidar, isn't it? All the horror and the pain. To give yourself to him?"

I sighed. "Yes."

"And if it works? If he overcomes his father?"

"We'll be together," I said, superstitious now about naming my dearest wish.

"That would make you happy?"

"For the rest of my life."

"Returning to Idavíd would make me just as happy," he said. "You see?" I met his gaze for the first time, without flinching. "I see, Skripi."

"Lay your head in my lap, Victoria. I can take away your worry and you can sleep."

"I doubt that I'll sleep," I said, resting my head in his lap anyway.

"Close your eyes. I'll tell you stories of Idavíd."

I closed my eyes. He had a strange smell about him. Not unpleasant, like the smell of wet fur on a beloved pet.

"Imagine you are a bird," he said. "The air is full beneath your wings and you slice through the sky like the edge of the moon cuts the night. You look below you and see a green so wild and deep that it makes your heart ache. Mist hangs still around the treetops and collects in the valleys and you dart down through it and into the trees. The shadows are long and dark, and only a little sun breaks through to make patterns on the ground."

Miraculously, my anxiety was easing, as though Skripi's words were medicine to my mind.

"Inside the wood is the bustle and thrum of life, of my kind making their homes among the trees, of our children playing in the long grass and running down to the lake to swim where the sunshine can find them. So imagine now that you are a fish, and you slip into the water with a flash of your silver tail. Beneath the surface are graceful drifts of weeds pulsing in the watery sunlight and schools of fish darting around in patterns. The water is cool and clear. Come out of the water and walk on four feet; be a squirrel and climb high up in a tree because winter is coming and the sky is grey; snow pitches down and ice hangs on the branches but the pines stay green, so even the glittering white carpet of the cold season can't hide the wild color."

He stopped for a moment, then dropped his voice to a whisper. "But there is more. Magic lives in Idavíd. Imagine yourself in your own body, standing between the trees on a mild spring day. If you close your eyes and hold your breath… do you feel it? The pulse of magic throbbing between the trees. Spiders spin their webs and catch the energy on the silver threads. The forest is alive with it. And we are right there at the center of Asgard, right in the heart of the land, and the Aesir don't know about the magic because they have never stopped for a moment to close their eyes and hold their breath." For a long time I waited for him to speak again, listening to the crack and pop of the fire. He stroked my hair, and said, "Sleep, Victoria. Vidar will be here soon, I know." Vidar. Thought of him drew a smile to my face and I slept.

It seemed I slept for a long time, and I woke ravenously hungry and with a bursting bladder.

"What time is it?" I asked, sitting up groggily. "I'm hungry."

"It's late afternoon," Skripi said. "I'm making you food."

"I need to… you know…"

"You'll have to go up to the forest. Be very careful."

The fear crept back into my body. I pulled out the runestone around my neck to show him. "Is this any use to me out there?"

"
Eolh
is little protection against Odin."

"Then it's useless?"

"Almost." He shrugged. "Odin is mighty."

I hesitated.

"Go on," he said. "Quickly."

I crawled back up the tunnel until I saw daylight ahead of me, paused near the opening and peered out. The world had turned white. Frost laced the undergrowth and the trees were encased in silver-white like frozen giants. The sun glinted off the ice and frost, making diamonds. It stole my breath, I had never seen anything so beautiful and so terrifying.

I listened for Odin, but heard only the sea, faint and far away, and the gentle creak of the ice. I quickly climbed out and relieved myself, then hurried back down into Skripi's hole. He put a bowl of soup in front of me, but the shiny floating black things in it drove away my appetite.

"You told me you were hungry," Skripi said, sitting cross-legged next to me.

"I was."

"Try to eat something."

I tasted the soup bravely and tried not to think about what was happening above ground. What if Odin became so annoyed at not finding me that he went back to the station? Would the doors hold him off forever?

"This is such a mess." I sighed. "I can't see a way out of it."

"Let us wait. Vidar will come for you. He's a powerful man with the blood of giants."

"Really?"

"So the stories tell us. He will save his father from the jaws of Fenrir." Skripi smiled, his face creasing into uncanny shadows in the firelight. "There is another story about Vidar. About how he renounced his family for the love of a mortal woman."

I smiled too. "I can't believe it's me," I said. "I don't believe in anything. Or, at least, I didn't. And all along—"

"Once you've known a great love and lost it, it's easier to condemn happiness than it is to believe it will come again." He cast his eyes downward. "That's what my siblings did. When we were first sent here, they swore they didn't want to return home, but I never gave up hope. And now, thanks to you. I'm a little closer to my dream."

"Well, I'm not beheading the draugr for you," I muttered.

"No. But Vidar is coming."

I couldn't help but smile. "Ah, I see. All this concern isn't just for me."

"I do care, Victoria," he protested earnestly. "We help each other."

"Yes, we do. Thank you. And thank you for the soup. It's delicious. Just don't tell me what's in it." I lay down on the soft floor in front of the fire after our meal, and Skripi sang me songs of Idavíd and I thought about the future, waiting for me just beyond this trial. If Vidar came, I could be safe. Somehow, maybe, we'd be together. An ache of longing overcame me, curled up like a forest creature underground, a longing for something that I had known and then lost. Slipping away and supping away from me. Hours passed, Skripi didn't tire of singing. Then, abruptly, he stopped. His head cricked to the side, like a bird listening for something.

"What is it?" I asked. My tired heart wanted to race but hadn't the energy.

"I felt a shiver."

"Odin?"

"No. A shiver in the night. Bifrost has opened."

I started upright. "Vidar?"

"I hope so."

I pulled on my anorak.

"No, Victoria. We can't go out. We'll wait here for Vidar to find us."

"I have to see him."

"But Odin—"

"I have to see him before he does something foolish." Such as agree to go home with Odin and never see me again.

"Victoria, it's not safe."

"I don't want to lose him!" I cried, turning on Skripi. "You don't have to come with me. I'll be careful. I'll stay on Odin's left, I'll move silently. Vidar will be looking for me, I know it." Skripi touched my hand and I felt that unearthly calmness emanating from him. "I won't stop you," he said. "May good things come to you. And should you and Vidar have a chance to speak, ask him about the draugr."

"I will. May good things also come to you." _ I crawled up the tunnel and emerged into the early evening. Lights from far away filtered through the trees. The electricity was back on at Kirkja. This knowledge gave me confidence. Yes, Isleif and his followers had succumbed to Odin's power, but this was the twenty-first century.

I climbed to my feet, looking right and left, watching the fog of my breath disappear into the dark. My bare feet were frozen, but I couldn't be quiet any other way. Which direction? Vidar usually camped near the northeast. I took two steps. A noise behind me stopped my heart. Before I could turn, a massive meaty hand had clapped onto my shoulder and wrenched me around.

I found myself, for the first time, face-to-face with Odin.

Vidar watched the water run between Aud's fingers. He was numb with shock.

"I'm sorry, Vidar," Aud said.

"It can't be."

Aud tried to touch his hand but he flinched away.

"It can't be!" he screamed to the stormy sky. Already, as Odin left Asgard, the clouds were drawing away, the branches of the tree began to calm, but in Vidar's blood the storm continued.

"I'm going after him," he said.

"You can't. He's closed the bridge."

"I'll make Heimdall open it."

"How? Reason with him? It's too late, Vidar."

"It's not too late," he roared, turning on her. "Where is the thread?" Aud pulled it from her apron and held it out on her palm. "Here."

"You see, the colors still shine. Fate is not decided. She is not dead."

"Stop to think, Vidar. Heimdall is a mighty warrior, used to fighting off giants who want to cross Bifrost. Even if you picked up a sword, you couldn't defeat him. Victoria is easy prey. Odin will find her and it will be over."

"Don't say that! Victoria is intelligent and resourceful. She knows the signs, she'll be on her guard. It's not like the first time, when they only had a church to hide in. Their buildings are made of metal and stone; they have locks that no key can open. She'll wait for me, she needs me." Aud shook her head; the clouds dashed and dappled over the moon to illuminate her pitying face. "Vidar!